“Le Rital” made an impression, “Aime-Moi” or “I won’t write to you anymore” made hearts beat faster in the 1980s: Belgian singer Claude Barzotti died of cancer in his house on Saturday. .
The slightly hoarse-voiced singer-songwriter “died at the age of 69 in his bed surrounded by his two daughters” in Court-Saint-Étienne, between Brussels and Charleroi, in Belgium, his manager and conductor told AFP. Laurent Comtat.
“Barzotti preferred to be described as a singer of emotions than as a romantic. “He was a lively skinned, really sensitive person who drank to fight his stage fright,” he said.
The ailing Barzotti had cut short his career in 2020 and died of pancreatic cancer.
“I am Rital and I remain so / And in word and gesture / Your seasons have become mine / But my music is Italian,” Barzotti sang in his biggest hit The Rital (1983).
Born Francesco Barzotti on July 23, 1953 to a family of Italian immigrants from the Marche region (centre), the singer with curly, intensely brown hair evokes his origins and his condition as a “foreigner” in this song – which new generations might hear in the Movie “Camping”.
His father was a minor. Claude will learn music theory, classical guitar and singing in his youth. He will start his career in the 1970s, but success will not come until the 1980s.
His hits include slow songs and hits that rocked the booms of the 1980s, such as “I won’t write to you anymore” (1984) or “Aime-moi” (1990).
In 2008-2009 he took part in nostalgic tours “Tender Old Man and Blockhead” with Marie Myriam, Frank Alamo, Demis Roussos or Patrick Juvet.
Barzotti had spoken publicly about his alcohol problems several times and confided on Belgian television that at times he drank up to five or six bottles of whiskey a day.
“I’m a sad person. I can’t explain it because I have everything, but I actually don’t have anything,” the screen blurted out.
“Claude Barzotti was the Franco-Italian lover on duty, a lovely and sincere guy who suffered a lot from women,” recalled the singer Hervé Vilard (“Capri, it’s over”) for AFP, who mainly performed at concerts with was with him .
“He was the idol of the Middle East! You went to a nightclub, if you were French, to please you we sent you Barzotti’s records. You went to New York, heard Barzotti in Little Italy!” he emphasized.
“His songs weren’t marshmallows. He needed the words, he was Latin. And that was another time,” he continued.
Barzotti? “A deliciously funny man full of humour, he loved life and that may have won out,” producer Olivier Kaefer, who has organized shows over the years, told AFP. 1980. “We will regret it very much.”
Among the reactions to his death on Saturday, French Communist Party secretary-general Fabien Roussel said he was “sad to learn of the death of Claude Barzotti, the interpreter of the Rital, and of so many songs from the ’80s that have brought us to the… have brought wings. “dance”.